I am still numb after America re-elected Donald Trump (DT) with a mandate which must be among the strongest for any president in history! Why? How? WHY? These one-word questions are hammering my mind, which just continues to be numb despite the blows.
Whenever the INEXPLICABLE happens, I look for truly unusual, utterly outlier data points to try and make a sliver of sense. In Kamala Harris’s (KH’s) case, there are THREE facts which are simply impossible to square … oh ok, they are impossible to triangulate.
ONE: KH outbid DT almost three to one in raising campaign funds. She got a billion dollars until October to Trump’s $400 million. And in the last fortnight, she scooped up over $20 million, while Trump had to settle for a bare $5 million. Why did she get the dollars but not the votes?
TWO: It’s estimated that between 10 to 12 million – yes, as many as TEN to TWELVE million Democrat voters – refused to show up at the polling stations. Four years ago, this cohort had voted for Joe Biden, but they refused to come out for Kamala. WHY? How could the poor lady win if over 15% of her support just vanished on polling day?!
Just do the math. Joe Biden had beaten DT by over six million popular votes; and DT beat KH by about five million; and over 10 million of those who voted for Biden did not turn up for Kamala. I’ve rarely seen such a perfect linear equation that explains a political defeat.
THREE: On the day Biden quit and KH was pitchforked into the race, black women did a spontaneous Zoom call and raised a million dollars for her. A couple of days later, white women, not wanting to be left out of expressing gender solidarity with the underdog, raised $8.5 million on another Zoom – there were 164,000 white women on that call, touted to be the largest zoom call in history.
Ever since then, there must be a billion column inches published on how the women of America had coalesced behind her, incensed at Trump’s misogyny, and specifically angry about the virtual nationwide ban on abortions. Among suburban women, she led by 20 percentage points in the polls. It was speculated that even in rural areas, those women who were controlled by their menfolk, were the “silent ones” who would tell their men “Of course honey, I voted as you ordered, for Trump”, but anonymously punch the ballot for Kamala.
So, it is SHOCKING that KH trailed 47%-52% among white women voters. This single act of “betrayal” may have damaged KH more than any other.
To be sure there were other surprises. 54% of Hispanic men, once a citadel of the Democrats, voted for Trump. And 20% of black men switched their allegiance to a once-pariah DT. While there is no authentic tally for South Asian men, I reckon their behaviour was a cross between the Latinos and Blacks. I had first-hand anecdotal evidence of this.
My usual chauffeur in New York is a Pakistani immigrant. He came to America two decades back and pulled in his entire clan over the years. I thought he would be in the hate-Donald-only-Kamala camp. But his take left me reeling: “No sir, I will only vote for Trump. I hate Kamala Harris”. Unlike several Arab Muslims, his reason was not the atrocities in Gaza; he just wanted a stronger economy. And surprise surprise, he wanted illegal immigrants banned and thrown out.
This was counterintuitive, but I encountered this sentiment elsewhere too. My conclusion is a bit chilling – having acquired American citizenship, these immigrants now want to protect their turf against people like themselves who had gotten in years ago and taken away white jobs. They are now troubled about losing their brown jobs.
But I can understand this shift in the lower-income immigrant demographic to Trump. What I still cannot fathom is the contradiction in why white folk, especially women, gave such generous donations to Kamala, whipped up Zoom calls and rallies, but then did not turn up to vote for her.
I finally found the answer in the wisdom of Sant Kabir (India’s revered poet-saint):
Bura jo dekhan main chala, bura na miliya koi
Jo dil khoja aapna, mujh sa bura na koi
(As I went searching for the sinner outside, I realised that if I honestly look inward, I will find that I am the biggest sinner)
So, I searched inward for the answer to the triangular contradiction. Why would I contribute handsomely, and rally energetically, but then not go out and vote for my candidate?
The answer leapt at me: Guilt. The propensity of money to assuage guilt.
Whenever some tortured, unfortunate, suffering, terminally ill person reaches out for help, I simply send some money. If their situation worsens, and they need my physical help in taking them to a specialist who would be unreachable to them but accessible to me, I shy away from making that effort. I send more money, to quieten a conscience that has welled up with guilt. I use money as the balm for my soul, to convince myself that I have done my good deed, and I need to do no more.
I believe that’s what that critical cohort of 10 million white American men and women did. They gave money to Kamala Harris, secure in the belief that they had helped her take on “the evil man”.
But when it came to actually going to the station to vote for her, their deeply buried prejudice against a woman of colour, an immigrant, somebody who is “not quite us”, held them back. Of course, they felt painfully guilty at their folly, but assuaged that guilt with throwing even more dollars at KH.
Now everything falls in place. Why KH got record donations. Why DT outbid her 52%-47% among white women voters. Why he beat her by 5 million votes, because 10 million of KH’s followers just chose to hide. That’s why Kamala Harris lost.
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